Dear Leo
I'm not sure how committed people on this list are to staying with Pascal but if you are prepared to jump ship to Ada then I can tell you from my own experience it is well worth the effort.
This is an interesting proposal.
I just installed GCC 4.7.0 with ADA included on my MacOS 10.7 laptop (still with 10.7 so I can use existing GPC binaries). The ADA compiler works right away, which is awesome.
I downloaded p2ada binaries and translate the following program:
program p; begin writeln('hello world from Pascal.'); end.
The ADA output compiles immeditaely in the ADA compiler, and runs correctly. I note that the ADA code contains 38 lines, but I'm guessing that much of the extra occurs only once per translation. I now try to translate the following program:
program p;
type graph_type(num_points:integer)=array [0..num_points-1] of real; graph_ptr=^graph_type;
var xg:graph_ptr; i:integer; begin new(xg,100); for i:=0 to 99 do xg^[i]:=i; end.
In p2ada I get: "Syntax Error at line 4"
It looks like p2ada does not translate dynamic schema types. I would have to convert them all manualy. But does ADA itself support dynamic schema types? It supports a format like this:
type QData is array(Positive range <>) of Quarndex;
I guess that's an array of any integer size. If anyone can confirm that it's possible to translate dynamic schema types into ADA, then this translation looks like a good long-term solution.
Yours, Kevan